What I read, write, watch, listen to or do between hot cups of the good stuff.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Day Seven: Favorite TV Show

Day Seven: Favorite TV Show

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Easy one for me!

I have loved Friday the 13th: The Series from day one, way back in the Fall of 1987. Would watch it in my room around midnight on Saturdays, on a small black and white, non-cable TV. Seriously!

I tuned in at first because I was curious as to how the Friday the 13th movies and Jason Voorhees were going to work on the small screen. But the title and some behind the scenes people aside, this show had nothing to do with the movies. This was a whole different concept, and it was something I fell in love with.

Three quite varied people come together and find out they have inadventantly helped to place hundreds of cursed items into the world. Their mission is then to recover these cursed antiques, out doing harm to countless unsuspecting people, and it was never an easy one. They suffered losses and faced death constantly, but they kept at it, knowing that had to do the right thing, even if the right thing came at the cost of their own happiness - even their own lives. Noble concept for a little late-night TV series!

The stories were good, and the writing improved by leaps and bounds as the show went on, but what kept me and other fans tuned in was the core cast. Micki, Ryan and Jack were strangers, to us and to each other, when the show began, but they became a family, always there for each other, no matter what.

Of course, Micki's portrayer, 80s wonder Louise Robey, was easy on the eyes for all the young men out there. But she also gave Micki a heart that we watched grow over the three years the show ran. She was beautiful, but she was also brave. And she had some classic 80s hair!

John LeMay played the everyman Ryan, a geeky guy who wanted to just look for the fun in life, but soon found himself forced to grow up and take on the horrors the world had to offer. It changed him, and LeMay was skilled at showing how our hero grew and suffered, the weight of the dark side of the world bearing down on him always.

Jack Marshak was the senior member of the trio, the man who had been all over the world and dabbled in a little of everything over the years. He had become somewhat of a loner, but when he took up the responsibility of the store and the retrieval of the antiques with Micki and Ryan, he found something he didn't expect: a new family. Chris Wiggins portrayal of Jack was never phoned-in, he brought his "A game" always, and he brought out the best in his younger co-stars.

In the final season, we meet Johnny, portrayed by Steven Monarque. He is brought in late in season two as a friend of Ryan's, but after the events of the third season opener, he finds himself mixed up in the shop and the crusade the characters are on. Does he run away from the horror? Nope. Johnny jumps in to help, and while he didn't always make the right choices, he did give it his best.

The show was canceled too soon, I believe. The ratings were still good in its third season, but the production company or studio was ready to move on, or buckled to pressure from angry groups protesting the show, depending on which story you read. Regardless, the show ended without a true "final episode", our heroes still out there, trying to get back all those antiques and lock them safely away in the vault.

A post all about the limo the characters drove - I'm not kidding!
Do I seem to over-think an old TV show too much? I don't believe so. We all have something we like, something we see more in than the average person would. Perhaps the show is locked up in a nostalgia in my mind, but it doesn't matter.